Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/346

330 with the innocent introduction that he desired to speak with a "character so celebrated." Swedenborg received him very kindly, gave him "delicious coffee," and they talked for three hours "principally on the nature of human souls and their states in the invisible world." The young man asked if Swedenborg could procure for him an interview with his deceased brother. The old man inquired what his motives were. Collin confessed he had none but brotherly affection and "an ardent wish to explore scenes so sublime and interesting to a serious mind." Good reasons, Swedenborg said, but not sufficient; but if any important spiritual or temporal concern had been involved he would have then "solicited permission from the angels who regulate such matters."

Swedenborg had a pretty tall, erect, rather slender figure, Collin said, a fair complexion, eyes of serene brightness. "At the time of my interview with him he was seventy-seven [78] yet retained marks of beauty and appeared to have considerable vigor of mind and body."

In Collin's opinion many people believed in Swedenborg's intercourse with the invisible world, though "not a few judicious persons believed that Swedenborg might on some occasions receive information from invisible agents, and yet be a visionary as to many things; and that such a faculty was not at all a proof of doctrines unconnected with it."

The same persons carefully investigated the facts of the cases where Swedenborg had apparently acquired supernatural knowledge, such as the case of the Queen of Sweden, the Marteville receipt, etc., which Collin himself had heard frequently, always the same as to substance though differing in details, "nor was either of them disputed, so far as I knew."

Swedenborg's religious doctrines, according to Collin, were hardly known to the general public "because Swedenborg was not solicitous to communicate them, and few of his readers thought proper to do it." He never, he said, heard anyone discuss the doctrine of the unity of God, except among some of the learned.

There were, however, people who did not overlook Swedenborg's doctrines. These were clergymen of quite a different stripe from the amiable and liberal Collin, who was to become pastor of Swedes' Old Church in Philadelphia.